On today's Apple earnings call, COO Tim Cook basically said the iPad has no competition.

Windows tablets are "big and heavy and expensive" and generally require a stylus or keyboard to use effectively -- this neatly summarizes the problem with Microsoft's tablet strategy (or lack of tablet strategy), which is simply to pack the standard version of Windows into new types of touch screen devices.

As far as Android tablets go, Cook said that they're "bizarre" products that are more like scaled-up smartphones -- not true tablets. Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is going to ship on tablets from Motorola and other vendors later this quarter, but so far? They're just "vapor," says Cook.

This is how Apple was able to ship 7.3 million iPads during the last quarter of 2010, capturing about 7% of the global PC market with a device that just launched three quarters ago.

His full remarks, which came during Q&A, are below (as transcribed by Engadget):

There's the [tablets] that use Windows, they're generally big and heavy and expensive. They have weak battery life, they require a keyboard or a stylus as an input device, customers are frankly just not interested in them. Then you have Android tablets, and the varieties that are out shipping today, their operating system wasn't designed for tablets. Google has said this, this isn't just Apple saying this. That means you have the size of a tablet that just isn't reasonable for what we call a 'real tablet experience.' That's just a scaled-up smartphone, which is a bizarre product category. If you do a side-by-side with an iPad, you'll pick an iPad.